Butterworth reviews

Requiem: The Pity of War

Ian Bostridge, Antonio Pappano (Warner Classics)

James Rutherford performs songs by Butterworth

It’s good to see the growing international regard for British composers extended to the tragically unfulfilled George Butterworth. Not that conductor Kriss Russman is exactly foreign – Estonian-born but an alumnus of the Royal College of Music, Cambridge and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Nevertheless, his knowledge of and depth of feeling for this ill-fated Edwardian are striking.

Bryden Thomson conducts A Butterworth's Symphonies Nos 1, 2 & 4

Not George Butterworth, the English pastoralist; this is Arthur Butterworth (1923-2014), a British composer of northern landscapes, of moors, brisk winds, and wuthering heights. As these interwoven symphonies unfold in BBC radio performances from the 1970s and ’80s, taped off-air by Lyrita’s late founder Richard Itter, it’s easy enough to spot the influences: Sibelius and Nielsen, with spots of Bax’s Celtic mysteries and Vaughan Williams in barbed wire mode.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales play Butterworth

'This is powerful advocacy for one of British music's heroes'

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Butterworth

The Banks of Green Willow Idyll; Six songs from 'A Shropshire Lad'*; A Shropshire Lad Rhapsody; Two English Idylls; Suite for string quartette; Love blows as the wind blows*; Orchestral fantasia (completed by Russman)

*James Rutherford (baritone); BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Kriss Russman

BIS BIS-2195

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John Carol Case Sings Somervel, Butterworth & Elgar

John Carol Case (baritone) and Daphne Ibbott (piano) perform A Shropshire Lad, Twilight and Maud.

The English Song Series Vol 20 - George Butterworth

Just a month after Mark Stone’s Complete Butterworth Songbook (reviewed in July) comes another collection from Roderick Williams, rapidly becoming the voice of this repertoire – and not without reason.

The Complete Butterworth Songbook

Butterworth, yet another World War I casualty, left orchestral compositions such as The Banks of Green Willow which suggest he might otherwise have rivalled his friend Vaughan Williams. His songs, though, also have a haunting, poignant quality that reflects the poet he set most, AE Housman – although, unlike some, he catches Housman’s sardonic edge, for example in ‘Think no more, lad’.

Butterworth, Delius, Grainger

As I write, in the midst of an early August heatwave, this collection of folk-inspired music by George Butterworth and Frederick Delius comes into its own. But it’s more than merely mood music. There’s real substance in the works of George Butterworth, a strength and originality so tragically cut short by the battlefields of World War I.

A Butterworth, Gipps

Sibelius strongly influenced this Symphony of Arthur Butterworth (b1923 - not to be confused with George Butterworth who died tragically in World War I.) Its outer movements evoke raw elemental forces; in the first, swirling strings and heavy brass punctuations suggest the iron grip of winter and icy seas, while the finale whips up a tremendous whirlwind of a storm on the mountains with the music raging thrillingly.

Finzi, Gurney, Butterworth, Farrar

If you enjoy English song, this set is a must. Michael Hurd explains in his excellent notes that the collection seeks to fill gaps; it also makes a compelling case for wider recognition. Many of these songs were composed by Ivor Gurney and receive devoted performances. These composers were involved in the Great War, and some of them failed to survive it, but the songs range across several decades. The singers are Britain’s best, and their excellence is matched by the accompaniments of Clifford Benson. Terry Barfoot

Barber, Butterworth, Horder, Ireland, Moeran, Orr & Lennox Berkeley

The juxtaposition, in this complete recording, of spoken and sung versions of the 63 Housman poems that make up A Shropshire Lad helps us to see what it was about the poet’s work which obsessed English composers earlier this century. It reveals limitations as well as strengths: Housman’s fastidiously controlled language drew many lovely settings, but it was always in danger of encouraging a polite lyricism. Only a few composers dug deeper to uncover the concealed ironies and achieve great songs.

Bridge/Bantock/Butterworth: Suite for Strings; There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook; Summer; The Pierrot of the Minute; The Banks of Green Willow

This is an excellent transfer. Each work is beautifully and sensitively performed. The gossamer, multi-part string writing in Bantock’s popular Pierrot of the Minute is now revealed in all its sublime subtlety. Summer lovingly captures images of a sultry day. Del Mar also convincingly pictures the cold rustling of late autumn hedgerows and icy waters heightening Ophelia’s tragedy in There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook, and the lovely Butterworth work is surely one of the most beautiful evocations of the English landscape. Ian Lace

Bridge/Bantock/Butterworth: Suite for Strings; There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook; Summer; The Pierrot of the Minute; The Banks of Green Willow

This is an excellent transfer. Each work is beautifully and sensitively performed. The gossamer, multi-part string writing in Bantock’s popular Pierrot of the Minute is now revealed in all its sublime subtlety. Summer lovingly captures images of a sultry day. Del Mar also convincingly pictures the cold rustling of late autumn hedgerows and icy waters heightening Ophelia’s tragedy in There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook, and the lovely Butterworth work is surely one of the most beautiful evocations of the English landscape. Ian Lace

Vaughan Williams/Elgar/Butterworth

The strongly evocative pastoral verses of Housman’s Shropshire Lad and Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems of a wandering vagabond’s reminiscences inspired some of RVW’s best writing. The orchestral settings heighten the drama and atmosphere: the intensity of the gale On Wenlock Edge and the crisp chill of winter on ‘Bredon Hill’. Both soloists shine; Allen’s ‘Whither Must I Wander’ should wring tears from even the strongest. The Elgar and Butterworth settings are delightful too. Highly recommended. Ian Lace

Walford Davies,Somervell, Butterworth And Vaughan Williams

Three completely unrelated discs, embracing 73 offerings from the treasury of (mostly) 20th-century English song – and hats off to those whose idea it was to lead us so beguilingly down the musical byways. Prospice is a short cantata by Walford Davies, and it shares its disc with four song cycles for baritone, some accompanied by string quartet. Oxenham’s interpretations are perceptive. He’s relaxed in the more restrained items, but doesn’t lack punch when it’s needed; and his diction is pretty intelligible – more so than Sarah Leonard’s.

Vaughan Williams, Peel, Butterworth & Quilter

Allen’s singing in Butterworth’s ‘Is my team ploughing?’ is exquisite, and beautifully recorded. This isn’t ‘interpretation’ – the song simply comes to life. Elsewhere, Allen’s tone and phrasing are always admirable, but some of the other performances seem a degree or two less involving. Or is it simply that the programme lacks variety – one of the qualities which makes Bryn Terfel’s collection The Vagabond (which also includes Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad cycle) so repeatable? It is possible to have too much idle summery beauty on one disc. Well worth sampling though. Stephen Johnson

Vaughan Williams, Butterworth

As detailed last month, Vaughan Williams’s dissatisfaction with his London Symphony after its premiere in 1914 led him to make a number of cuts over the following years. That first version, revealed in this one-off recording sanctioned by the composer’s widow, has some 15 minutes’ more music than the one we have come to know.

Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Gurney, Butterworth, Warlock

Anthony Rolfe Johnson recorded the two Vaughan Williams cycles early in his professional career. To call his performances ‘fresh’ would be an understatement: there’s a sense of wonder and love in Rolfe Johnson’s singing which gives even the best-known songs the force of something new. Songs of Travel has traditionally been baritone territory, and it could be argued that Rolfe Johnson’s sweet lyric tenor lacks the manly, stoic resolution demanded by ‘The Vagabond’, but in ‘Youth and Love’ and ‘Bright is the Ring of Words’ he is simply irresistible.

Barber, Butterworth, Horder, Ireland, Moeran, Orr, L Berkeley

‘I always give my consent to all composers in the hope of becoming immortal somehow.’ Thus wrote AE Housman – and it certainly worked. This clutch of reissues celebrates the dormant music awakened from the hidden nuances and ambiguities within Housman’s naive rhymes and passionate monosyllables by nine English composers and one American.